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America & the Holocaust, Deceit & Indifference (PBS)

Category: Documentary
Description:
Video Codec..........: XviD ISO MPEG-4 Video Bitrate........: 1025kbps Duration.............: 1:25:04 Resolution...........: 528*400 Framerate............: 29.970 Audio Codec..........: 0x0055 MPEG-1 Layer 3 Audio Bitrate........: 110 kbps VBR Audio Channels.......: 2 Filename.............: America and the Holocaust.avi Filesize.............: 733,464,576 No Subtitles http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195518/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/ In 1937, a 17-year-old German Jew named Kurt Klein emigrated to the US to escape the growing discrimination against Jews that had become a terrible fact of life following Hitler's rise in 1933. Together with his brother and sister, who had emigrated previously, Klein worked to establish himself so that he could obtain safe passage for his parents out of Germany. America and the Holocaust uses the moving tale of Klein's struggles against a wall of bureaucracy to free his parents to explore the complex social and political factors that led the American government to turn its back on the plight of the Jews. The film is produced by Martin Ostrow. Hal Linden narrates. In 1938, American society had its own political, social, and economic problems, including a long-standing--and rising--anti-Semitism. Despite stories coming from Europe about a campaign to force Jews out of Germany and about the horrors of Kristallnacht ("the night of broken glass"), the majority of Americans were fearful that an influx of immigrants would only aggravate the serious unemployment problem brought on by the Depression. More than 100 anti-Semitic organizations blanketed the US with propaganda blaming Jews for all America's ills. Businesses discriminated against Jews, refusing them jobs. Signs at private beaches bore the words "No Jews or Dogs allowed" and certain hotels and housing developments proudly proclaimed themselves "Restricted." Even the government was not immune from anti-Semitic sentiments. While the Kleins were struggling to obtain visas from the American consulate, the State Department ordered its consuls to stall the process. "Even though we continued our attempts to get our parents out--because we knew that they were in the unoccupied part of France which was still not totally under German control--everything we did for them turned into nothing," recalls Kurt Klein. "The State Department probably had a greater degree of anti-Semitism than others, particularly in the immigration section," says former Treasury Department employee Edward Bernstein. "Their attitude was, `If we're patient, we find that the problems of the Jews in Germany are not really life-threatening." But for Kurt Klein and other German-American Jews with relatives overseas, patience was a commodity they couldn't afford. By the end of 1941, the Nazis had murdered half a million Jews. Although trains regularly headed to fully operational killing centers by the spring of 1942, the "final solution" was still a well-guarded secret. That summer the State Department was advised by Gerhart Reigner, the representative of a Jewish organization in Geneva, of Nazi plans to exterminate all the Jews in Europe. Their response was to dismiss the information, calling it "a wild rumor inspired by Jewish fears." "The State Department was actively blocking information about the genocide, " says historian David Wyman. "Roosevelt refused to focus on the issue. The American churches were largely silent...and the press had little to say--and buried that little on the inner pages. So it fell to Jewish activists to bring the information to the American public." It took protests and petitions from Jewish organizations and finally the Treasury Department, headed by Henry Morgenthau, to uncover the State Department's deliberate obstruction of rescue. "Secretary Morgenthau, who valued above all else his relationship with the president, nevertheless felt he had to put himself on the line and be the spokesman on this issue," recalls John Pehle of the Treasury Department. At last, on January 16, 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt met with Morgenthau in the Oval Office. Six days later, Roosevelt officially reversed the government's policy of obstruction. He signed Executive Order 9417, creating the War Refugee Board, which was instructed to "take all measures to rescue victims of enemy oppression in imminent danger of death." "In the end, the War Refugee Board played a vital role in saving the lives of 200,000 Jews," says Wyman, "a very valuable contribution, to be sure. But the number is terribly small compared to the total of six million killed. The Board did prove that a few good people--Christians and Jews--could finally break through the walls of indifference. The great shame is that if Roosevelt had created the board a year earlier [it] could have saved tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands more--and in the process, have rescued the conscience of the nation."
Seeders: 35
Leeches: 13

2009.05.XX - PBS American Experience - We Shall Remain (Parts 1-5)

Category: Documentary
Description:
This landmark television project is a five-part series that shows how Native peoples valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture -- from the Wampanoags of New England in the 1600s who used their alliance with the English to weaken rival tribes, to the bold new leaders of the 1970s who harnessed the momentum of the civil rights movement to forge a pan-Indian identity. We Shall Remain represents an unprecedented collaboration between Native and non-Native filmmakers and involves Native advisors and scholars at all levels of the project. "This is a groundbreaking series which will be referenced for years to come by scholars and historians"
Seeders: 1
Leeches: 14

PBS American Experience~A Class Apart 2009 02 23

Category: Documentary
Description:
PBS American Experience~A Class Apart 2009 02 23 349mb/ 60 min In 1951 in the town of Edna, Texas, a field hand named Pedro Hernández murdered his employer after exchanging words at a gritty cantina. From this seemingly unremarkable small-town murder emerged a landmark civil rights case that would forever change the lives and legal standing of tens of millions of Americans. A team of unknown Mexican American lawyers took the case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court, where they successfully challenged Jim Crow-style discrimination against Mexican Americans. AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents A Class Apart from the award-winning producers Carlos Sandoval (Farmingville), and Peter Miller (Sacco and Vanzetti, The Internationale). The one-hour film dramatically interweaves the story of its central characters— activists and lawyers, returning veterans and ordinary citizens, murderer, and victim — within the broader story of a civil rights movement that is still very much alive today. The film begins with the little known history of Mexican Americans in the United States. In 1848, the Mexican-American War came to an end. For the United States, the victory meant ownership of large swaths of Mexican territory. The tens of thousands of residents living on the newly annexed land were offered American citizenship as part of the treaty to end the war. But as time evolved it soon became apparent that legal citizenship for Mexican Americans was one thing, equal treatment would be quite another. “Life in the 1950s was very difficult for Hispanics,” Wanda García, a native of Corpus Christi, explains in the film. “We were considered second-rate, we were not considered intelligent. We were considered invisible.” In the first 100 years after gaining U.S. citizenship, many Mexican Americans in Texas lost their land to unfamiliar American laws, or to swindlers. With the loss of their land came a loss of status, and within just two generations, many wealthy ranch owners had become farm workers. After the Civil War, increasing numbers of Southern whites moved to south Texas, bringing with them the rigid, racial social code of the Deep South, which they began to apply not just to blacks, but to Mexican Americans as well. Widespread discrimination followed Latinos from schoolhouses and restaurants to courthouses and even to funeral parlors, many of which refused to prepare Mexican American bodies for burial. During World War II, more than 300,000 Mexican Americans served their country expecting to return home with the full citizenship rights they deserved. Instead, the returning veterans, many of them decorated war heroes, came back to face the same injustices they had experienced all their lives. ............... On May 3, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its ruling in the case of Hernandez v. Texas. Pedro Hernández would receive a new trial — and would be judged by a true jury of his peers. The court’s legal reasoning: Mexican Americans, as a group, were protected under the 14th Amendment, in keeping with the theory that they were indeed “a class apart.” “The Hernandez v. Texas story is a powerful reminder of one of many unknown yet hard-fought moments in the civil rights movement,” says AMERICAN EXPERIENCE executive producer Mark Samels. “It’s easy to forget how far the country has come in just fifty years, reshaping our democracy to include all Americans.” Online video segments http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/class/introduction Support your local PBS Station by making a contribution or by purchasing their DVDs.
Seeders: 16
Leeches: 5

PBS American Experience - The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2009.HDTV.SoS)

Category: Documentary
Description:
Originally aired: 2009.01.26 "Robert Oppenheimer's life and legacy are inextricably linked to America's most famous top-secret initiative -- the Manhattan Project. But after World War II, this brilliant and intense scientist, tasked with the development of the atomic bomb and widely considered one of the most important minds of the twentieth century, fell from the innermost circles of American scientific policy. At the height of the Red Scare, the veil of suspicion fell over J. Robert Oppenheimer. He was accused of having communist sympathies and was pressed to explain his relationships with known communists. This biography will present a complex and revealing portrait of one of the most influential American scientists. Interweaving interviews with family members, scholars and colleagues with dramatic recreations featuring Academy Award-nominated actor David Strathairn, this film follows J. Robert Oppenheimer on a fascinating arc from the heady world of international physics to the top-secret Manhattan Project, and finally to the dark days of the Red Scare and McCarthyism." more info: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/oppenheimer/ == Runtime: 1:49:23 Source: OTA High Definition 1080i Encoding: xvid.720x416.1686kbps.mp3.160.vbr File Size: 1.4GB Support your local PBS Station by making a contribution or by purchasing their DVDs. To help speed up future releases, please try to seed this torrent as much as possible. Thanks. == SoS = http://www.sonofshun.com/forums ------------ Content Type: [Documentary]
Seeders: 48
Leeches: 54

PBS American Experience - Eyes on the Prize: Parts 1-14of14 (TVRip.SoS)

Category: Documentary
Description:
Part of PBS' American Experience, Parts 1-6 were released in 2006 and the other parts in this series were aired in 2-episode installments in February 2008. This torrent includes all 14 parts and the filenames are unchanged from before to make it easier to resume any existing downloads. Note: There are video and audio glitches for the last 15 minutes in Part 7 and video corruptions in the final minute of Part 8. Produced by Blackside, "Eyes on the Prize" tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. Winner of numerous Emmy Awards, a George Foster Peabody Award, an International Documentary Award, and a Television Critics Association Award, Eyes on the Prize is the most critically acclaimed documentary on civil rights in America. "Eyes on the Prize" recounts the fight to end decades of discrimination and segregation. It is the story of the people -- young and old, male and female, northern and southern -- who, compelled by a meeting of conscience and circumstance, worked to eradicate a world where whites and blacks could not go to the same school, ride the same bus, vote in the same election, or participate equally in society. It was a world in which peaceful demonstrators were met with resistance and brutality -- in short, a reality that is now nearly incomprehensible to many young Americans. Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, "Eyes on the Prize" traces the civil rights movement from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Voting Rights Act; from early acts of individual courage through the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions. Julian Bond, political leader and civil rights activist, narrates. Part 1: Awakenings (1954-1956) Individual acts of courage inspire black Southerners to fight for their rights: Mose Wright testifies against the white men who murdered young Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. Part 2: Fighting Back (1957-1962) States' rights loyalists and federal authorities collide in the 1957 battle to integrate Little Rock's Central High School, and again in James Meredith's 1962 challenge to segregation at the University of Mississippi. Both times, a Southern governor squares off with a U.S. president, violence erupts -- and integration is carried out. -- Parts 1-2: runtime = 1:50:58, xvid.640x480. 970kbps.mp3.112.vbr, filesize = 850MB -- Part 3: Ain't Scared of Your Jails (1960-1961) Black college students take a leadership role in the civil rights movement as lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South. "Freedom Riders" also try to desegregate interstate buses, but they are brutally attacked as they travel. Part 4: No Easy Walk (1961-1963) The civil rights movement discovers the power of mass demonstrations as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges as its most visible leader. Some demonstrations succeed; others fail. But the triumphant March on Washington, D.C., under King's leadership, shows a mounting national support for civil rights. President John F. Kennedy proposes the Civil Rights Act. -- Parts 3-4: runtime = 1:51:05, xvid.640x480. 967kbps.mp3.112.vbr, filesize = 850MB -- Part 5: Mississippi: Is This America? (1963-1964) Mississippi's grass-roots civil rights movement becomes an American concern when college students travel south to help register black voters and three activists are murdered. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenges the regular Mississippi delegation at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. Part 6: Bridge to Freedom (1965) A decade of lessons is applied in the climactic and bloody march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. A major victory is won when the federal Voting Rights Bill passes, but civil rights leaders know they have new challenges ahead. -- Parts 5-6: runtime = 1:51:36, xvid.640x480. 954kbps.mp3.112.vbr, filesize = 850MB -- Part 7: The Time Has Come (1964-66) After a decade-long cry for justice, a new sound is heard in the civil rights movement: the insistent call for power. Malcolm X takes an eloquent nationalism to urban streets as a younger generation of black leaders listens. In the South, Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) move from "Freedom Now!" to "Black Power!" as the fabric of the traditional movement changes. -- Part 7: runtime = 0:55:28, xvid.640x480.1119kbps.mp3.160.vbr, filesize = 500MB -- Part 8: Two Societies (1965-68) Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come north to help Chicago's civil rights leaders in their nonviolent struggle against segregated housing. Their efforts pit them against Chicago's powerful mayor, Richard Daley. When a series of marches through all-white neighborhoods draws violence, King and Daley negotiate with mixed results. In Detroit, a police raid in a black neighborhood sparks an urban uprising that lasts five days, leaving 43 people dead. The Kerner Commission finds that America is becoming "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal." President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the commission, ignores the report. -- Part 8: runtime = 0:55:42, xvid.640x480.1124kbps.mp3.160.vbr, filesize = 500MB -- Part 9: Power! (1966-68) The call for Black Power takes various forms across communities in black America. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes wins election as the first black mayor of a major American city. The Black Panther Party, armed with law books, breakfast programs, and guns, is born in Oakland. Substandard teaching practices prompt parents to gain educational control of a Brooklyn school district but then lead them to a showdown with New York City's teachers' union. -- Part 9: runtime = 0:56:12, xvid.640x480.1081kbps.mp3.160.vbr, filesize = 500MB -- Part 10: The Promised Land (1967-68) Martin Luther King stakes out new ground for himself and the rapidly fragmenting civil rights movement. One year before his death, he publicly opposes the war in Vietnam. His Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) embarks on an ambitious Poor People's Campaign. In the midst of political organizing, King detours to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, where he is assassinated. King's death and the failure of his final campaign mark the end of a major stream of the movement. -- Part 10: runtime = 0:56:05, xvid.640x480.1108kbps.mp3.160.vbr, filesize = 500MB -- Part 11: Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More (1964-72) A call to pride and a renewed push for unity galvanize black America. World heavyweight champion Cassius Clay challenges America to accept him as Muhammad Ali, a minister of Islam who refuses to fight in Vietnam. Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., fight to bring the growing black consciousness movement and their African heritage inside the walls of this prominent black institution. Black elected officials and community activists organize the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in an attempt to create a unified black response to growing repression against the movement. -- Part 11: runtime = 0:56:06, xvid.640x480.1108kbps.mp3.160.vbr, filesize = 500MB -- Part 12: A Nation of Law? (1968-71) Black activism is increasingly met with a sometimes violent and unethical response from local and federal law enforcement agencies. In Chicago, two Black Panther Party leaders are killed in a pre-dawn raid by police acting on information supplied by an FBI informant. In the wake of President Nixon's call to "law and order," stepped-up arrests push the already poor conditions at New York's Attica State Prison to the limit. A five-day inmate takeover calling the public's attention to the conditions leaves 43 men dead: four killed by inmates, 39 by police. -- Part 12: runtime = 0:56:20, xvid.640x480.1097kbps.mp3.160.vbr, filesize = 500MB -- Part 13: The Keys to the Kingdom (1974-80) In the 1970s, antidiscrimination legal rights gained in past decades by the civil rights movement are put to the test. In Boston, some whites violently resist a federal court school desegregation order. Atlanta's first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, proves that affirmative action can work, but the Bakke Supreme Court case challenges that policy. -- Part 13: runtime = 0:56:03, xvid.640x480.1105kbps.mp3.160.vbr, filesize = 500MB -- Part 14: Back to the Movement (1979-mid 80s) Power and powerlessness. Miami's black community -- pummeled by urban renewal, a lack of jobs, and police harassment -- explodes in rioting. But in Chicago, an unprecedented grassroots movement triumphs. Frustrated by decades of unfulfilled promises made by the city's Democratic political machine, reformers install Harold Washington as Chicago's first black mayor. -- Part 14: runtime = 0:55:48, xvid.640x480.1112kbps.mp3.160.vbr, filesize = 500MB -- more info: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize == If you found this program informative, support the network/series by purchasing their DVDs if available. To help speed up future releases, please try to seed this torrent as much as possible. Thanks. == SoS = http://www.sonofshun.com/forums ------------ Content Type: [Documentary]
Seeders: 5
Leeches: 6